We are all well aware that we need to maintain a thorough exercise regime in order to keep ourselves in peak physical condition. This is why we all try to fit at least 150 minutes of moderate aerobic exercise, or 75 minutes of vigorous aerobic exercise, into our weekly routines and regimes. But did you ever consider how exercise can affect your overall sense of wellbeing? Nowadays, we are becoming increasingly aware of the importance of our mental health and emotional wellbeing, and exercise is a brilliant way to improve your overall mood. If you feel that your current exercise regime isn’t ticking all of your boxes when it comes to maintaining a good quality of life on an emotional or mental level, here are a few different regimes that you might want to try out instead!

The gym is an easy form of exercise to get yourself involved with. You don’t have to rely on the presence of anyone else and many gyms are now open twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, which allows you to head to the establishment and exercise as and when you please. There also tends to be a wide range of equipment on offer, meaning that you can exercise in a wide variety of ways in a small space. One day you can focus on your arms, the next your legs, the next your core. The exercise, in general, has been found to alleviate symptoms of anxiety and depression. It also gives you an escape from the worries and stresses of your day to day life, providing you with a period where you can put your phone aside, focus on a given activity, and avoid any unrelated distractions.

Team sports are brilliant for lifting your mood. So, let’s focus on basketball Why? Well, not only does the exercise itself benefit you in the way mentioned above, but seeing as it is a team sport, it encourages you to socialise and communicate effectively with others. It’s a great way to instill a little team spirit into your life, and to make new friends who you might not have ever met in any other social situation in your life. You can just throw on your basketball uniforms and head to the court. What’s more? Once you know the rules of the game, you can head to the pub or another meeting place and watch professional matches together on the television. This is a great way of mixing sport with social interaction!

Different sports and regimes will prove preferable to different people. So, take on the mindset of trial and error and don’t feel like you have to stick with anything that you’re uncomfortable with. You will find something that suits you down to a tee eventually!

As you can see, exercise can prove beneficial to you in more ways than working you out physically. Give the above options a chance and you should find your sense of wellbeing improving in next to no time!

You might think that money and your faith have very little to do with one another apart from maybe donating a little to your church and a chosen charity each month, but you would be quite wrong. The bible actually has quite a lot to say about money and its management and by following its teachings on the subject, you can take better control of your finances and develop a much healthier relationship with money…

The first thing you need to know is that everything we have here on earth comes from God and all of our posessions belong to him. When you begin to view money in this way, it can help to relieve some of your anxiety around your finances, because you will come to realize that everything is unfolding as it should do and that your money is never really yours - not completely anyway. Obviously, we all need a certain amount of money to get by and we must all work hard and make good decision in our financial life, but ultimately God can look after our money much better than we can and giving it up to him, looking to him for advice and acting more mindfully around money will help us to have a far better relationship with it.

Most Americans are managing at least a small amount of debt, so there is no need to feel embarrassed or ashamed if you too have racked up debt. However, it is worth noting that the bible is very clear on the fact that God does not want people to be in debt. Quotes like Romans 13:8: "Owe no man anything, but to love one another" and Proverbs 22:7 which states that borrowers are servants to those who lend them money make it very clear that debt is not ideal. So, if you’re currently in debt, see what you can do to get out of it fast; that could mean getting a debt consolidation loan on the web, talking to a debt counselor to help you come up with a plan, or simply tweaking your budget so that you can clear your credit card balance a little quicker. Once your debt is gone, do whatever you can to avoid putting yourself in that position again, but know that if there are emergencies and it is unavoidable, that you will not be judged harshly and you can always get back to a place of no debt again with the right effort.

A lot of people make a lot of bad decisions and do things that are less than kind and respectable in order to make more money and get as rich as they can. Although it is fine to work hard and enjoy the fruits of your labor, the bible is clear that the love of money is the root of many evils and that going after wealth above all else is a bad idea. Knowing this is so helpful in life because it allows you to take the pressure off and pursue forms of work that you enjoy and which serve others, if you want to, rather than those which will make you money, but also bring unhappiness and compromise to your life. It also helps us to better appreciate exactly what we do have, which is certainly the route to greater happiness here on earth.

There are countless people who would strongly disagree with this statement, but from the Christian perspective, there is nothing good about greed. There are countless bible verses that talk about the importance of charity, which show just how important it is to use your money for good. It is really helpful to give a percentage of whatever you have to those in need. Not only does it show you how abundant you really are, but it also helps others, and it makes you think more about money, what it is, how it is and should one used and how much you really need to be happy, which can help to prevent you from getting into debt or going after more money at the expense of everything else in your life.

That is not to say that you should not save money for a rainy day. It is important that everyone, even Christians, save enough money for emergencies, so that they do not end up getting into debt and so that it is possible to look after oneself and one’s family, as well as the wider community. So, do open a savings account, but be as generous as you can with your money too.

A lot of people in the 21st Century seem to almost worship money, They judge others and themselves, not on their character or their good deeeds, but on how much money they have in the bank. The bible is very clear that this is wrong; it says that you cannot serve God and mammon. What does this mean in practical terms? That money is a tool just like any other, and although it is pretty impossible to function without it in the modern world, you should not look at it as anything more than a tool like a hammer or a screwdriver. Or is nothing special and you should not elevate its status. It is worshipping money that leads to people being reckless, wracking up credit card debts, working themselves into the ground, lying and stealing to get more and that is one of the worst things anyone can do.

The bible has a lot to say about money, but its primary message is that we should not get caught up in the pursual of riches. We should not get into debt or put ourselves into compromising situations for it. We should be careful with money, work for what we have and be generous where we can. This will lead to a healthy relationship with our finances.